Pagina 424 de 1294

He was listening to what his mother was saying to his sister,

sitting perfectly still with pouting lips and wide-open eyes,

just as all good little boys have to sit when they are undressed

to go to bed. A little girl, still younger, dressed literally in

rags, stood at the screen, waiting for her turn. The door on to

the stairs was open to relieve them a little from the clouds of

tobacco smoke which floated in from the other rooms and brought

on long terrible fits of coughing in the poor, consumptive woman.

Katerina Ivanovna seemed to have grown even thinner during that

week and the hectic flush on her face was brighter than ever.